


still know your heart, still know your eyes

by mimosaeyes



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Extinction!Jon, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Metamorphosis, Monster!Jon, spoilers for the first act of season five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26156164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: Jon starts getting cracks in his skin every time he calls on the Ceaseless Watcher. He doesn’t know why. He just knows he can’t tell Martin.Based, with permission, onthe AUbyskyberia. Eventual monster!Jon. For TMA hurt/comfort week on tumblr, prompt: “hiding pain/injury”.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 29
Kudos: 414





	still know your heart, still know your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> The body horror imagery is canon-typical, I think, but there are content warnings in the end note if you need them.
> 
> If you haven’t seen skyberia’s art for this AU, [this post](https://skyberia.tumblr.com/post/624652680519876610/jon-starts-getting-weird-cracks-on-his-skin-every) basically covers it. I drew on [these](https://skyberia.tumblr.com/post/625282945554464769/metamorphosis) [three](https://skyberia.tumblr.com/post/624748188588441600/%E3%83%84) [too](https://skyberia.tumblr.com/post/624278395768946688/out-of-the-chrysalis), although I deviated from that last one (a comic).
> 
> Beta-ed by [animaginaryquill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/animaginaryquill). Thank you, as ever, for your invaluable feedback.
> 
> Title from Lost by Dermot Kennedy.

Afterwards, as the sounds of the merry-go-round fade away behind them, Jon can’t remember if he’d consciously decided to kill the thing masquerading as Sasha James. 

He hadn’t known beforehand what would happen. At least, that’s what he tells himself. He’d been angry, and that anger had burned behind his eyes and pooled in his ribcage, filling his lungs and throat until it all came spilling out in the words _Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing._ He understood what he was doing, then; he could feel the destructive power thrumming through his torso and arms, trickling down to the tips of his fingers. He could have stopped. Instead, he just… let go. 

Does that make him any less culpable?

Martin’s been giving him space, trailing behind by several feet. Jon can tell he has questions about what happened. He wishes he had satisfying answers. He wishes he could stop walking, let Martin catch up to him and take his hand. After each of the previous two domains — the trenches and the village — they’ve reached instinctively for each other, Jon often quiet and lost in thought, Martin making valiant attempts to coax him out. 

This time is different, though. This time, Jon hadn’t only recorded a statement and fed off the trauma of those he’d helped to trap. He’d actively done harm. Not to free people, but to exact revenge. And it felt good. What does it say about him that it felt _good_?

His hands are still tingling. It’s hard to describe the sensation. Numbness and smarting at the same time, like when water comes out of the tap shockingly cold during winter.

Absently, Jon starts to massage his left hand with his right. At once, the prickling feeling spikes into outright pain, and he gasps and looks down. Then he stares.

There are cracks in his skin, from the tips of his fingers to midway along his forearms. The cracks are finely webbed though not very deep, like a hard-boiled egg that’s been tapped against the table. Its broken shell in small pieces barely held together by the protein membrane beneath.

Without thinking about it, without really registering that this is his _skin_ , Jon pokes experimentally at his left wrist. He grits his teeth against the pain, which has an almost electric quality, redolent of the adrenaline rush he’d gotten as he called on the Beholding.

Panic starts to cloud his head with a high-pitched ring. Being marked by each of the entities has so far left him with plenty of scars, but this… this seems different. This doesn’t look survivable — not for a human, at least.

It has to be related to what he did. Martin had reacted with surprising glee and called it _smiting_ instead of _supernatural murder_ , but Jon still crossed some sort of line. Now it looks like he’s paying the price.

The faint crunch of boots on ground is the only warning he gets of Martin’s approach. Jon makes a split-second decision. He’s been keeping his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but now he quickly rolls them back down, tugging them over his knuckles.

“Hey,” Martin says softly, stopping right behind him. “You’ve been quiet for a while. Are you ready to talk about it?”

Jon stares down at the parts of his fingers that peek out from under his sleeves. _He can’t know_ , he thinks, borderline-hysterically. _He mustn’t see this happening to me._

“No,” he manages to say, and makes himself turn around and even smile slightly. “Can we just walk together for now?”

“Sure,” Martin agrees, and reaches for his hand. Jon snatches it away.

Martin’s brow furrows in confusion and concern. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” Jon lies, resisting the urge to pull his sleeves more securely over his hands. “I… My hands are a little clammy. Kind of gross to hold. Let’s keep going.”

Martin doesn’t look entirely convinced, but slowly falls into step to Jon’s right. For good measure, Jon tucks his right hand into his jacket pocket, and doesn’t swing his left arm much as he walks.

He tries to think while keeping his face impassive. His eyes sometimes glow when he compels people, and when he appears in the dreams of statement givers, his worm scars often blink at them. Those changes are temporary, so why not this one too? Maybe he’d simply pushed too hard with a power he, ironically, knows little about. When he next looks, his skin could be back to normal.

  
  
  


It isn’t, of course.

Time means next to nothing anymore, but after what used to be a few days, the cracks haven’t magically disappeared. Jon checks after making a recording in the Buried, vaguely hoping that feeding the Beholding will encourage it to fix its Archive’s body. No such luck. The wounds, as he’s come to think of them, don’t look any worse, but definitely aren’t better either. The main difference is that Jon is slowly growing used to the pain, wincing less or not at all when his sleeves chafe against his skin, or when his hands get jostled.

What doesn’t change is how bad he feels about keeping a secret from Martin. Logically, he knows he’s being unreasonable. Childish, even, like when he was growing up and had done something wrong, and tried to pretend nothing was amiss so his grandmother wouldn’t scold him. Is that how he’s expecting Martin to react, with anger? No, of course not. He’ll be worried, though, and fearful, the way he has been too much already because of Jon. If this is something Jon can fix himself, he should.

Meanwhile, every little thing makes him feel guilty — such as when Martin remarks, following Annabelle Cane’s call, that Jon isn’t generally open with his emotions. He says it casually, but Jon still shifts to hide his hands. When they take a break, he ends up delivering a spiel about Gertrude Robinson and the history of the Institute, and he has no idea how Martin doesn’t notice the cracks then. He almost wishes he had, so he could stop all this pretending without taking on the burden of actually telling him.

The more Jon thinks about it, the more likely it seems that Martin was too absorbed in listening to the statement. He hates the idea that he’d compelled him to listen without interrupting. (The Beholding had lapped it up, of course. Jon’s hands twinge along their fault lines — as if he needed to be reminded about something else he’s ashamed of.) But the alternative possibility, when it occurs to him, is more disquieting still: that the injuries are only in his mind. 

The theatre-lover in Jon immediately and wryly points out the parallels with Lady Macbeth and her bloody hands that will ne’er be clean. Wouldn’t that be convenient? If Martin never has to know, Jon never has to see the look on his face as he realises his boyfriend is becoming even more inhuman.

  
  
  


He doesn’t kill Oliver Banks. He doesn’t want to. It’s only when he gets to Jude Perry in the tenement that he feels that rage once more, hotter than the building itself. Killing her takes longer. Jon would like to think he goes slower because he’s dissuaded by her begging, or at least by the pain that erupts in his arms. He knows the truth though. The more the cracks fill with what feels like molten lava, the more he remembers shaking Jude’s hand and burning.

Once they’ve stumbled a safe distance away, Jon hands Martin a bottle of water from his bag. He rubs his back in soothing circles, biting his lip so he doesn’t betray the pain it causes in his hands. The cracks have spread up to his elbows now, and have deepened. Like soil in an arid desert, the fissures seem to run deep into his flesh. Jon has the sudden thought that he could peer in and catch a glimpse of white bone, dessicated and long dead.

When Martin’s coughing begins, at last, to subside, Jon pulls bandages out of their first aid kit and wraps them briskly around his own forearms. He has most of the damage covered by the time Martin turns around.

Martin rubs at his eyes, still watering from the smoke, and frowns. “Did you get hurt? Let me help.”

Jon knows he’s not a good liar. So he doesn’t lie, exactly. “I did,” he admits, “but don’t look. You said you hate burns.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not worried that _you_ got burned,” Martin protests. “Besides, I thought you said this place couldn’t hurt us permanently.”

“Nothing can really harm me anymore,” Jon agrees. Which — huh. Which would mean the cracks _aren’t_ harming him. He files that away to think about later. 

For now, he holds out his bandaged arms to Martin. “Sorry I look like a mummy. Kiss it better?”

He’s joking, mainly, but bless Martin, he actually tries.

  
  
  


Jon should have held his hand in the Lonely. He did at first, but after a while the pain made him let go. Now he’s lost him in this endless house, and what’s the point of having Beholding powers if he can’t find him with them?

He breaks his promise never to try and know something about Martin. He tries again and again, sucking at that ocean of knowledge through his useless straw, running up repeatedly against the limits of a boundless Archive stuck in a shell he is rapidly outgrowing. He clenches his fists in frustration and resolve, even though he can feel his skin shifting, slow as tectonic plates. 

Then he makes other promises. To the Ceaseless Watcher, he swears loyalty, says any price will be worth it to find Martin. To any avatar of the One Alone who might be listening, he swears vengeance, never mind if it rips the last shreds of bodily integrity away from him.

 _I won’t let it_ , he’d told Martin back in the cottage when he asked about the things that wanted to harm them. That’s the most important promise, the one he cannot let himself break.

A small eternity passes before he has Martin back in his arms, before they are stumbling out of the house together. Jon runs his bandaged hands over Martin’s cold cheeks, where the tear tracks have dried and left a faint salty residue. “I’m so sorry,” he says hoarsely. “I’d never leave you.”

Martin frowns and blinks. His eyes are bright yet unfocused, like there’s still fog clinging to them. “Are _you_ alright? For a second, I could’ve sworn I saw...”

Jon can feel that the cracks have spread to his torso, forming a patchwork over his ribcage and peeking just above the neckline of his shirt. He clears his throat and pulls up his collar. “Let’s get you away from here.”

He doesn’t tell him how, in one of the mirrors lining the infinite hallways, he’d seen an eye open up in the middle of his throat. How he looked out of it at himself, and knew for certain he couldn’t tell Martin. 

Instead, he tells another lie: that he’s only cold from the Lonely, hence the bandages he’s still got on, and the scarf he pulls out of his bag. Martin blows on his hands and rubs them, and Jon smiles at him through a pain that is beginning to feel like penance.

  
  
  


The cracks get worse again after he kills Jared Hopworth. He knew they would, which he supposes is the difference between a spur-of-the-moment act, and premeditated murder. He shouldn’t have done it — Jon had, after all, asked him to take his rib in the first place, and he’s admitted to Martin that killing avatars doesn’t help the people in the domains. Plus, Martin has been easing off on urging Jon to go full _Kill Bill_ , a reference he has since explained while Jon listened, rapt and fond. (This, incidentally, has made him paranoid that Martin suspects something. He’s too smart not to, frankly, and the realisation that he probably hasn’t said anything because he _trusts_ Jon, hurts even more than his arms.)

The hulking man seals his own fate when he turns to Martin and says, “The Archivist’s boyfriend. That’s why you’ve survived to this point, I suppose. You didn’t strike me as the hardy type when I attacked your precious Institute.”

Jon snaps. 

“It’s alright, you know,” Martin says later. “It’s true. Melanie and Basira were the ones with all the knives and fancy moves. I wasn’t much help.”

“You were more helpful than me.” Pain makes Jon sound wearier and sadder than he feels.

Martin frowns and stops him. “Jon, you were _dead_. That’s a pretty good reason for not being around at work. And... and you always come back, you know?” His voice has gone from droll to soft. “You always come back to me. For me.”

Suddenly the conversation has gotten too relevant, although Martin doesn’t know it. Jon bites his lip before remarking, “I came back different.”

“Well, yes, the static and the smiting took some getting used to,” Martin concedes. “It’s still _you_ , though.”

This is the moment. He’s all but said it doesn’t matter what monstrous changes have come over Jon so far. Jon could tell him now, after wanting to and desperately avoiding it for so long. Sure, Martin will be angry, and worried, but then he’ll say something like that and the tight feeling in Jon’s chest will collapse in on itself. Martin will make it better, the way he’s made everything about Jon’s life better.

Except he can’t this time, can he? He would only fuss over Jon, insist they look for some sort of cure — and there isn’t one. Jon’s not dying; he can’t. Something else is happening to him, and telling Martin won’t get them any closer to the Panopticon or even to London, where Melanie and Georgie might be. Other people, other _humans_ , on whom Martin can depend.

He has to keep going. They’re on the outskirts of the neighbourhood belonging to the Dark. Martin will never find his way out of there alone.

Silently, he pulls him along.

In the eternal night, Jon starts bleeding through his bandages. Well, _bleeding_ isn’t quite accurate. There isn’t enough light to see by, but Jon knows the liquid seeping out through the deep fissures in his skin isn’t red. It’s black, black like ink on a page. It seems fitting. What is he, after all, but thousands of pages of other people’s trauma?

As with blood loss, though, Jon starts feeling lethargic, like his head is heavy and his ears are stuffed with cotton. His vision tinges with black at the edges, confusing him since they’re also reaching the far side of the domain, where the sky is lighter. He blinks and tries to fight back unconsciousness, but it snags him by the ankle and pulls him under like a riptide. He stumbles, his knees buckling.

Immediately, Martin’s hand is at his elbow. “Whoa! Careful,” he says. He still sounds lighthearted; he can’t have realised yet that anything is wrong. 

Jon can’t deny it any longer, though. He tumbles forward, and he’s not sure what catches him first: the relief from pain as he falls into oblivion, or Martin’s arms, steady and strong.  
  
  


When he comes to, Martin is sitting beside him. Jon lifts a hand and touches the nearest part of him: his knee. It’s solid. He’s really still here.

Martin clears his throat. “At first, I thought it was just the light,” he says, almost conversationally. “You were so washed out-looking. Grey-faced. Then I noticed your arms. Your bandages, soaked through.”

Jon doesn’t say anything yet. He’s too busy staring at the hand currently resting on Martin’s knee. The bandages have been removed, but his arm is still sooty black. The texture has changed to something like feathers, like the down on birds before they finish moulting. And most importantly: there are eyes all along the arm, hidden for now behind closed lids. They’re not ready to open yet, but they will.

His other arm is still cracked soil. He tucks both limbs carefully out of Martin’s field of vision. Pointlessly, of course, but he does it anyway.

“I’ve been trying to work out when this happened,” Martin says. “Or when it started, rather.”

When he tries to speak, Jon croaks. “At the carousel. After...” He can’t finish the sentence. The words die in his throat when he sees Martin’s stricken look. 

“That long?” he whispers.

There’s no adequate way to confirm this, in Jon’s opinion. Not with all the emotions swirling across Martin’s face. So he just stays quiet, listening as Martin’s breathing hitches a little. Finally he asks, “Are you mad at me?”

Martin hesitates a moment before replying, and it doesn’t escape Jon’s notice that he doesn’t quite answer the question. “I’ve already been angry,” he says. “I’ve yelled and cried. I’ve shouted at the sky. It was very theatrical. Don’t get up yet,” he adds, pushing Jon firmly down once he notices him struggling up onto his elbows. Jon is surprised by how easily he succumbs to the slight force. He feels weak and unbalanced, like a newborn foal.

There’s something on the ground under his head. Martin’s folded jumper, it seems, while the shirt he’s still wearing has streaks of black blood on it. Jon gets a brief glimpse of Martin carrying his limp form the rest of the way out of the Dark and into the Vast plain where they now are. He shoves the vision down. He hadn’t even tried to know; the Ceaseless Watcher had volunteered the information.

Everything about Martin’s face and posture looks drained. “Could you just. Tell me why? Why didn’t you say something? What’s happening to you?”

After all the times he has imagined this conversation, dreading it, Martin has made things shockingly easy for him. _I was ashamed_ , Jon thinks. _I felt guilty. I thought I deserved this. Maybe I do._

What he says, though, is the biggest truth: “Because I was scared.” His voice is hoarse, barely his. Maybe that’s changing too. “And I was scared because I don’t know.”

Martin watches him for a long moment. His face doesn’t change as he starts to cry.

Jon wobbles upright and pulls him into a weak hug. Martin hugs back, shaking, his arm tentative around Jon, like he’s afraid he’ll fall apart if he squeezes too hard.

“I’m sorry,” Jon whispers. When Martin doesn’t say at once that _It’s okay, I forgive you_ , Jon’s glad in a cowardly way that he doesn’t have to see his expression.

At last, they pull back from each other. “Can I…?” Martin starts to say, before trailing off. Jon nods anyway, at which Martin runs his fingers ever so gently over his transformed arm. The sensation makes Jon shiver.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” Jon reassures him, then waves his other hand. “This one still does, though.”

After a minute, Martin takes a deep, steadying breath. “Okay. We can deal with this. Did the bandages actually help? I have more.”

Jon stares at him, amazed for a second at his strength and love and _kindness_.

“Sure. Keep me from falling apart,” he tries to joke, but the emotion makes his voice sound strangled, and Martin looks up, alarmed. Hurriedly, Jon adds, “I’m kidding.”

“Not funny,” Martin complains, leaning over and taking more gauze from his bag. “Come here.”

Carefully, tenderly, he begins bandaging Jon’s arm. The repetitive wrapping motion slightly hypnotises Jon, and he startles when Martin asks, “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

He’s already being as gentle as possible. So Jon only says, “It’s okay.” 

And it almost is.

  
  
  


Martin is quiet as they continue their journey through the Vast, and he walks slightly ahead with the tacit understanding that Jon will correct their course if necessary. This suits Jon just fine. He doesn’t want Martin to look at or touch him, not on the cracked arm that still hurts or the horrific, monstrous-looking one.

He suspects Martin needs some space too, to sort through his emotions about everything Jon had been keeping from him. There’s tension in the silence between them, and it’s hard not to read into it and wallow in self-pity. 

He doesn’t realise how far he’s lagged behind until he notices that Martin has stopped to wait for him. He jogs to catch up, rubbing absently at his arm as he does. It’s started itching, but the bandages frustrate any attempts to properly scratch it.

Martin sighs as he draws near, and Jon’s heart sinks. Then Martin shakes his head and says, chidingly but gently, “Stop that. You’ll make it worse.”

True enough, there’s a small spot of black seeping through the bandages at his wrist. Jon had barely noticed the pain over the itchiness.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ll keep my hand in my pocket, or something.”

Martin only sighs again. This time, though, he gives him a small, exasperated smile — the first since Jon had woken up — and reaches for his black, feathered arm, tucking it in the crook of his elbow. Jon blinks in surprise.

“Alright?” Martin asks.

Jon stares at him for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I shouldn’t have... You had a right to know what was happening from the start.”

“I did,” Martin agrees, sounding neutral without edging over into cold. He puts a hand over Jon’s. “No more secrets?”

Jon recognises this for the olive branch it is. “Of course,” he says. “And... thank you.”

Martin hums contentedly and presses close to his side.

They go on like this for another half day by Jon’s estimation, at which point Martin calls for a break. Jon paces and twitches, unused to feeling still, especially given his new sense of urgency. If something does happen that incapacitates him, then Martin doesn’t deserve to be left alone in the Vast of all places. The wind here smells faintly of salt, and listening to it whistling, one can feel quite devastatingly lonely.

Eventually, Martin coaxes him to sit long enough for him to redo the bandages. Jon recognises the furrow in his brow, so it doesn’t completely surprise him when Martin looks up sombrely and asks, “Why don’t we just stop?”

Jon thinks about it. “Where would we go?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Martin says dismissively. “Whatever’s happening to you… Jon, if there isn’t going to be much time, then I want all of it. I want to be with you, not keep walking towards some stupid Eye of Sauron tower.”

Wisely, Jon chooses not to ask for context on that reference at this point. “I’m not dying,” he points out, even though that’s not what Martin had said. 

“You’re changing,” Martin counters. “There’s no guarantee it’s in a way that’s good for you.”

“I’d never change so much that I’d leave you.”

Martin’s eyebrow quirks. “Just like that? You’re going to defy the will of all and sundry eldritch beings by sheer stubbornness?”

“Yes,” Jon says without thinking. Then again, weighty like a promise: “Yes.”

  
  
  


They make it out eventually, although Jon starts needing Martin’s support to walk. His back, for some reason, feels weird. Like something is pressing out of his shoulder blades against his bag.

When he realises what the next domain is, he almost starts laughing. The sound is harsh in the open air. “What is it?” Martin asks.

“Extinction,” Jon gasps. “Figures. End of humanity, ha!” 

If there is a cosmic consciousness to be found among the entities, Jon thinks he shares its sense of humour.

He had felt the Vast’s statement but not the urge to record it, oddly. The same goes in this domain. Mainly, he puts it down to his growing exhaustion, even though his patron has hardly gone easy on him for reasons of physical weariness before. Still, it’s interesting. It could be his imagination, but the eyes in the sky seem to be watching him in a different way now, less proprietorial than irritated.

He finally collapses against what might be the worst-looking couch in existence. Not on it, but against the back of it. For a couple minutes, Martin attempts to persuade him to get up and lay down, but Jon is nearly insensate at this point, and he eventually gives up. 

Martin wanders off, promising to return soon, and Jon is too far gone to stop himself from tracking him until he comes back bearing a dodgy-looking tarp that he affixes over Jon. In case it rains, he explains. Jon thinks he hears himself launching into a fierce invective about an umbrella and the impossibility of rain. He’s a bit incoherent, but he thinks he gets his point across. Martin periodically hums and strokes his hair back out of his face.

Things get a little hazy then. He sleeps for the first time since he opened the door into their dimension. In his thready dreams he sees the Panopticon on fire; he hears the beating of moths’ wings and confuses it with the fluttering of his own heart. As if from a great distance, he’s aware that he has a fever, he’s writhing around from the pain in his gut, pain so great it’s like something in him is dissolving and reforming. Someone is holding his hand. Martin. Martin is here, and he’s saying something. It sounds like, _Stay with me. Please._ Jon hopes that’s not wishful thinking on his part.

Where before, there was a door between him and the ocean, now he’s plunged directly into it. He’s not aware of how much time passes. He explores the world this way, samples all the different flavours of torment. He forgets to feel guilty; he leaves the reflex of a conscience behind with his body. 

Yet every time he starts to fully lose himself, he feels a tug deep within. He’s only a wave, but he knows there’s a shore. He’s only a moth, but he knows there’s a flame in a lighthouse that’s gazing out into the storm for him.

At one point, he’s conscious enough to feel Martin gently lifting his head and resting it on a delightfully soft pillow, the kind that couldn’t possibly have survived the apocalypse in such a state. He mumbles something that is not quite a question, and Martin says, “Shh. Just rest. I got it from Helen.”

“You... what?”

“She offered to take me into her corridors. I told her I wouldn’t go with her. She sends her regards, by the way. Says you look ‘rather peaky’.” A kiss on his forehead. “Don’t worry. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.”

Finally, one day, Jon wakes up. The tarp is gone. Only the sky is above him, and it’s watching him with narrowed eyes — nearly belligerent, he thinks. Not that he cares just at present. He feels strangely light, insubstantial. It takes him a moment to figure out why: the blissful absence of pain.

Then he checks his hands, and his vision blurs, that’s how much he panics. His body has changed. It’s fully black, the same shade as the ichor he had bled, but faintly iridescent as well. It’s feathery and tall and covered in eyes. Only force of habit, he realises, has led to him using the ones in his skull to see.

His body also has wings. _He_ has wings. They’re folded behind him now, but he knows they’re there, knows he’ll have to stretch them out soon or they’ll never function.

There’s someone else here. Someone who hasn’t looked away since he stood up. That shouldn’t be possible. He’s the Archive. He controls who looks and who is looked at.

“Jon,” says the person quietly. 

He pauses. His wings flutter indecisively. Behind each and every one of his eyes, a door creaks, straining against the weight of an ocean.

“Jon,” Martin says again. 

Yes. That’s his name. _Martin_ , Jon thinks, and suddenly the ocean doesn’t even matter, because he has an _anchor_.

“Martin,” he says, only his mouth doesn’t open. Instead, his voice comes out from a tape recorder that has tumbled out of his bag. One of Martin’s eyebrows ticks up at that, but he never stops looking at Jon. 

“I’m sorry.” Jon’s voice is more static than timbre. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Like what?” Martin counters. Jon watches as he steps closer, approaching slowly as if he were a wild animal. He doesn’t stop until he’s right in front of him, peering upwards to meet his gaze.

“A monster,” Jon rumbles. He has bowed his head slightly without exactly deciding to. His face is inches from Martin’s.

“I see you just fine,” Martin says. “You hear me, Jon? _I see you._ And I think...” He tiptoes and kisses him, right where the tip of his nose used to be. “I think you look like an angel. My beautiful, monstrous angel.”

Faintly, Jon wonders if Martin is afraid of him. He could know for sure, of course — but he made him a promise, a lifetime ago. To never look. To keep him safe.

To stay.

He keeps his promises.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: descriptions of cracking skin, bandaging, bleeding, extra eyes.
> 
> Deeply unsure about this one. Not my usual fluffy fare, plus I can only hope I’ve done the original art justice. Ah well, c’est la vie.


End file.
